A noob reviews the 705A

I've asked a bit about it over a year ago and last week, been grinding my way up slooowly, got it recently and it's a lot of fun. It's my favorite T10 (I also have JPE100 and WZ5A)

Speed: Pretty fast for a heavy, not on the same level as fast mediums like the 5A but reaches its 40kmph limit pretty easily, faster than most heavies and some slower mediums, feels quite fast. Traverse speed is kinda crap though.

Armor: Really good, godlike sidescraper and best or 2nd best turret in the game (I think?). I've never been pen'd through the turret anyway, and can count on one hand the number of times I've been penned while sidescraping. It's supposed to have a weakspot along the tracks but either I haven't been showing it or people don't know about it. The upper plate is strong and can pretty reliably bounce gold when you angle, it's not hard to angle so that if they shoot your side they bounce and force them to shoot the upper or lower plate at a pretty big angle. The lower plate is quite weak though and you want to hide it if possible. also you have 2450 hp which is nice, but it annoys me that the 60tp has 2600 for some reason..

"BuT PeOPLe CaN FiRE HE at YoU whEN YOu SiDESCrape"
true, but you can also fire HE back and you have 650 alpha, more on this later.

Gun: Pretty average as far as T10 guns go, only has three real strengths.

A: 650 alpha is good.
You outrade most tanks, and your HE is also very good, if people try to trade HE shots with you you will pretty much always come out ontop. Earlier today a 113 and me both snapshotted each other in the turret, he hit me for 130 and I hit him for over just over 400.

Having a good HE round is especially nice I have found in ranked battles where people are often hull down in sconqs, chieftains etc and trading HE into turrets. I've also penned quite a few paper tanks which is pretty hilarious.

B: Reload is a nice number. (14.3 for mine with rammer, vents and food)
Against tanks with faster reload you can trade shot for shot, especially while sidescraping, against tanks with a longer reload like 60tp or JPE100 you can get two shots into them or if they miss or bounce and you shot them or are reloading you know you have a few seconds spare to fire and then duck back behind cover before they can shoot you.

C: ~152mm gun means you can overmatch a lot.

Aesthetics
I think the tank looks really cool. That muzzle brake and gun wrapping look really nice and this was the initial reason I was interested in the tank 🙂

Weaknesses

The gun is TROLLLLL
Innaccurate gun and bad aim time, you will get a trolled a lot, at long range you have no chance of hitting weakspot but can still hit the side of a tank, at medium range you can struggle to hit cupolas and some small weakspots like 268v4 rangefinder, at close range it's generally fine but I have been trolled sometimes at really close ranges.

dpm is bad
like other superheavies and is7 it has bad dpm of ~2300. However you do have good armor and alpha so you can definitely play around this. It's fine having low dpm if you are taking no damage in return

Gold round is meh
317 gold pen is not great on a t10 heavy, compared to the 330 or 340 some heavies get. I've found this matters mainly for weakspots that are around 300mm in thickness like the 279e front (weakspot?) or E100 turret face, that extra 20mm makes a big difference in those cases, it also matters more if you spam gold. You do have the good HE to make up for it a bit though.

Bad gun depression
-5 gun depression is bad, I've mainly found this an issue on the hill in westfield. On the plus side you have an impenetrable turret so you can afford to let people shoot you in the turret while you target their turret/cupolas.

TLDR: 705A is a fun tank if you like Alpha, armor and like sidescraping (don't get it if you don't like sidescraping). If you get Paris you can go Sicko Mode.

I think if you are a very good player you will not like the 705a because
A: It's not amazing tank and you probably have OP meta tanks to play instead.
B: Gun handling is crap and you will get trolled
C: somewhat map reliant.

Thanks for reading and please discuss, do you think 60tp is better? I think probably but 705A definitely has advantages like no cupolas.